Zulmiro de Carvalho and the Organizing Sense of the World

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of the sculptural work of Zulmiro de Carvalho, exploring the relationship between his rural origins and the impact of his training at St. Martin’s School of Art in London. It argues that the artist’s trajectory constitutes a poetic transmutation of organic experience into purified geometric forms that function as cultural doubles of the earth. Drawing on Michel Serres’s The Origin of Geometry, the article proposes that geometry, as an act of measuring and ordering the world, offers a key conceptual lens through which to interpret his work. The analysis focuses on the Pórticos series, the Prado do Repouso cenotaph, and the Pórtico do Rio, demonstrating how the sculptor mobilizes body, space, time, light, and void as symbolic devices. It concludes that Zulmiro de Carvalho, from his rural origins, organizes chaos into a poetic, silent, and rigorous cosmos.